Apple has today received a 500 million euro fine (about $570 million) from the EU commission under the Digital Markets Act. The commission said the fine relates to Apple’s App Store anti-steering policies. It is being forced to make changes, or else face further fines.
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The EU announcement does not specify exactly what it finds to be in breach, although it likely relates to Apple’s App Store fee structure. Apple currently charges a commission of more than 17% on purchases made outside of the app. This would be in opposition to the DMA’s requirement that these abilities be offered “free of charge”.
Apple has stopped listing its Apple Intelligence features as “available now” following an inquiry from the National Advertising Division (NAD).
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Additionally, the NAD found that Apple similarly included its AI-supercharged Siri beneath the “available now” heading even though it still hasn’t arrived. In response, Apple said it has updated its promotional materials and disclosures to “adequately communicate their status.” The company also discontinued its “More Personal Siri” video, which showed actor Bella Ramsey using the voice assistant to pull up the name of a person they met months ago.
It’s a hidden gem that helps you do almost anything on your computer—add to your calendar, list tasks, search files, do math, or control apps—without touching your mouse.
If you can only have one birding app on your phone, Merlin is my best recommendation. It hits that sweet spot between ease of use, speed, accuracy, reference images and data, and sheer breadth of species and geographies.
In one of Rockwell’s first moves, he enlisted Ranjit Desai, a longtime top deputy from the development of the Vision Pro. Desai will now be in charge of much of Siri’s engineering, including the underlying platform and systems groups. Rockwell told staffers that the executive’s background in “high-performance, low-latency systems” would help Siri performance reach a “new level”.
Olivier Gutknecht, a senior Vision Pro software executive, is taking over the team in charge of Siri’s user experience. Nate Begeman and Tom Duffy, veteran Apple software engineering managers, are also joining the Siri team to run underlying architecture. Rockwell says that will lead to “world-class” and “scalable” technology.
Today, yet another iPhone app that I am using has introduced a new option to disable the scrubber on the lock screen's Now Playing thing.
There are now many apps that allowed users to disable the scrbueer. Or, in one case that I am aware of, outright disabled it without providing any options for the users.
I sure hope Apple designers are paying attention.
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